A Facebook spokesperson told The Information the tests were in an
"early" stage. USA Today Sports Media Group general manager Chris
Pirrone confirmed the publisher was working with Facebook's
Audience Network to implement the technology.

Header bidding is one of the ad tech industry's big challenges to
Google DoubleClick's monopoly.

The technology essentially lets Google's rivals jump to the front
of the line in the contest for ad slots. It can help publishers
get the best price for their ad inventory because header bidding
technology allows multiple exchanges to compete with each other —
and a publisher's in-house sales team — driving up ad rates.

Before header bidding, many publishers used a tool within
DoubleClick called "Dynamic Allocation," which allowed Google's
ad exchange, AdX, to compete with their in-house sales teams.

The problem for the ad tech community is that they have to wait
until after AdX had a look-in before they can compete for these
ad slots. That greatly reduces their chances of winning in the
auction that takes place for ad space in the time a user loads up
a web page.

Ad tech companies created a hacky workaround — header bidding —
which asks publishers to insert a piece of code in the header of
their webpages, which sends out the ad request before AdX takes a
look. Header bidding has proved hugely popular.
A report from BI Intelligence published earlier this year
suggested almost 70% of publishers have adopted header bidding
technology, compared to almost zero two years ago. It has
lessened many publishers' reliance on Google by anywhere between
10% up to 70%,
sources told Business Insider earlier this year.

AdAge
reports Facebook is likely to launch its header bidding
solution in September or October this year.

A source familiar with Facebook's plans told AdAge: "Google is
frankly very defensive because their position is being
threatened. If you now amplify that by Facebook saying, 'Hey,
wait a second, look, there's a chink in the armor. All these
independent companies have found it, why don't we do the same
thing and bring our wallet to bear?' We're actually going to
start to see an event that could at a very, very substantial
level check the Google monopoly."

However,
as Business Insider reported earlier this month, many people
within the ad tech and publishing industry think EBDA has a long
way to go before it convinces anybody it benefits anyone except
Google. Most of the sources we spoke to said a penned Q3 launch
is likely to be delayed as a result.